Japanese minister ignores slave labour claims by British PoWs

Japan's embattled Foreign Minister, Taro Aso, has been denounced by British former PoWs for his connection to Allied prisoners forced to work in slave-like conditions in his family's coalmines during the Second World War.

Aso, under harsh criticism from Washington to Beijing for what the New York Times called his 'offensive and inflammatory' attitudes, has never admitted or apologised for his firm's use of slave labour. Nor has the Japanese government paid compensation to the hundreds of thousands of enslaved workers, or to the families of the many who died.

The British ex-prisoners of war discovered Aso's connection only through inquiries by The Observer. When told, Steve Cairns, 88, of the Far East Prisoners of War Fellowship, who still suffers from injuries suffered in four years under Japanese slave labour, said: 'I think it's bloody scandalous. Aso should do more than apologise, he should make reparations to those who suffered in the mines.'

Arthur Titherington, 84, chairman of the Japanese Labour Camps Survivors' Association, said: 'It's quite disgraceful, but it's absolutely typical of Japanese politicians from the Prime Minister down. Taro Aso is obviously as two-faced as it's possible to get. This is quite normal with the Japanese. They refuse flatly to admit to anything. I've been attempting to get a meaningful apology since 1946. Over the years they've been killing the story with silence.'

Yet, to Japan's surprise and irritation, its silence and indifference over this and other unresolved war crimes have now become its main obstacle to good relations with Asian neighbours. They suffered the most from its atrocities, which began even before the 1931 invasion of northern China, and caused the deaths of millions across the Far East.

Aso's coal mines exploited an estimated 12,000 Korean slave labourers as well as 101 British prisoners at its Yoshikuma pit in the southern island of Kyushu. Enslaved workers there - and in other firms' pits - were kept in appalling and dangerous conditions. They were starved and beaten. Many died.

Authorities in Tokyo ordered records destroyed in 1945, but three amateur historians in Kyushu have documented what happened from local sources. They found the workers were underground for 15 hours a day seven days a week.

The aristocratic Aso headed the family firm, which is now called the Aso Group, from 1973 to 1979 before entering politics with the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. During that time he did not address the complaints of foreign former slave workers. He maintains close links to the firm. In 2001 it entered a joint venture with Lafarge Cement of France, with Aso's younger brother, Yutaka, as president of the new company. Last December the French ambassador in Tokyo awarded Yutaka the Légion d'honneur. The guest of honour was Taro.

German officials, whose country has paid $6bn reparations to European workers enslaved by the Nazis, say that, though family links alone do not disqualify German citizens from public office, they are obliged to show atonement or make amends. But Aso has defended Japan's iron-fisted colonisation of Korea (1910-45) and Taiwan (1895-1945), and made racial supremacist remarks reminiscent of Japan's prewar fascist period.

Aso, who is related to the imperial family through marriage and is the grandson of a former conservative Prime Minister, is one of three leading candidates to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi when he retires in September. 'Because of this,' said Japanese critic Tatsuro Hanada, a Tokyo University professor, 'his attitudes and behaviour are a political issue and his qualifications an important subject to open to the Japanese public.'

But there has been no public debate and leading Japanese newspapers ignore the Aso slave connection. Although such treatment of PoWs contravened the 1929 Geneva Convention, this was not ratified by Japan. However, enslavement is still regarded internationally as a gross violation of basic human rights.

'The Japanese didn't care because they knew the men were replaceable,' Cairns said. 'They were callous and indifferent and we've always been horrified that these people were able to get away with not just murder, but sadistic murder, and have never had to say sorry.'